Online ‘Pedophile Hunters’ Are Growing More Violent — and Going Viral: With the rise of loosely moderated social media platforms, a fringe vigilante movement is experiencing a dangerous evolution.
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Vigilantism is on the rise regardless, Either because the police are incompetent / carefree about the complaints. or because individuals are overzealous, dont undrestand or agree with the law, and decide to cosplay as the punisher.
Or because the facade of "justice" is crumbling to reveal the truth of heirarchy behind it.
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Likely, or are likely to mistakenly target a trans person who happens to be around while they're hunting the person they cat fished. The people who are okay with extrajudicial violence are mostly conservatives. What's to say the people willing to go to such lengths to hurt someone wouldn't take the opportunity when they see someone they believe is a groomer and pedophile simply for being trans? It's easy to expand the definition, and we've seen it happen in the past. It's happening right now in rhetoric. Violence against trans people is already statistically high.
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Likely, or are likely to mistakenly target a trans person who happens to be around while they're hunting the person they cat fished. The people who are okay with extrajudicial violence are mostly conservatives. What's to say the people willing to go to such lengths to hurt someone wouldn't take the opportunity when they see someone they believe is a groomer and pedophile simply for being trans? It's easy to expand the definition, and we've seen it happen in the past. It's happening right now in rhetoric. Violence against trans people is already statistically high.
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That's a ridiculous set of assumptions, just because gender rules your life, doesn't mean it's the same for everyone. Go seek attention elsewhere.
Right. My lived experience doesn't matter, nor the statistics. I'm not seeking attention, I, like the majority of people reading this, am alarmed. I'm seeing people I care about and the community around me hurt every day, and you think "gender rules my life." Not a person worth listening to. When was the last time you got harassed in public for something intrinsic to yourself? For my trans wife, it was today. If you seriously think that trans people aren't currently at the front of the culture war, you're deaf, ignorant, or lying. Watch literally any pundit speak, any newscast, or any political debate around the country. Then tell me trans people shouldn't be concerned about violent rhetoric aimed at people they're increasingly being lumped in with. Bigot or stupid, I won't debate you on the reality plain around me daily.
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Right. My lived experience doesn't matter, nor the statistics. I'm not seeking attention, I, like the majority of people reading this, am alarmed. I'm seeing people I care about and the community around me hurt every day, and you think "gender rules my life." Not a person worth listening to. When was the last time you got harassed in public for something intrinsic to yourself? For my trans wife, it was today. If you seriously think that trans people aren't currently at the front of the culture war, you're deaf, ignorant, or lying. Watch literally any pundit speak, any newscast, or any political debate around the country. Then tell me trans people shouldn't be concerned about violent rhetoric aimed at people they're increasingly being lumped in with. Bigot or stupid, I won't debate you on the reality plain around me daily.
Correct, you're lived experience means nothing to me, that's for people who know you. As for statistics, you presented none.
And for the rest, you've invented a lot of what you think I said.
Take your victimhood elsewhere, there are people with real problems at the moment, as you can see there are pedo's and worse to deal with, which compared to your issues, is a mountains to molehills situation.
If you're reply is to tell me how hard trans people have it, you can fuck right off, there are much bigger fish to fry.
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There's one more angle to this - apart from the raise in vigilante violence and messing up with police operations which both are very valid.
Just as we stopped getting TV feeds constantly equating pedophiles to child molesters, those guys stepped in to fill the void.
Pedophiles are not inherently child molesters. This kind of equation is not only wrong, it also adds to promoting dangerous behaviors among them.
Plenty of pedophiles will never abuse a single child, knowing full well it is dangerous and harmful for minors to be engaged in such relationships. However, the more we equate pedophiles to predators, the more people, especially in the emotionally vulnerable groups like teen pedophiles, will actually accept themselves in this role. Among those who stands against this anyway, plenty will become suicidal, not seeing an option to live a non-offending life.
Not only that, but it both reduces the chance of someone going to get help, because they don't want to be hunted down, and reporting, because someone who knows of them might not want to see them be lynched, and won't report them for that reason.
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I always knew there was something wrong with that these people were doing but couldn't exactly put my finger on it and never talked about it because people would've yelled at me and used false dillema arguments like many people who criticized them back them recieved "You support pedophiles you removed"
One of these groups that operate out of the Pacific North West employs psychologists to create profiles on people the contact online. They target non-sex related forums like grief or mental health related support groups online. They’ll spend as much time as needed to hook these men and make them dependent on their carefully crafted online personas and even drive away their outside support groups to isolate them.
Regardless of your opinion of these individuals, going out of your way to exploit a vulnerable person and turn them into something their not is incredibly fucked up.
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Pedo accusations don't come from concerns for kids but from enpowerement to do violence and the ability to righteously attack.
This inversion from concern for others to desire to cause harm through paranoia derived justifications is becoming a real problem.
If someone steps in to stop them attacking the innocent they will claim those people are defending pedos.
We're going to have the stupidest of wars on our hands.
It's basically the same motivation as people who have a gun and are itching for the apocalypse so they can loose the safeties.
Even saying that it's righteous violence is ascribing positive motivations that may not exist. They're just looking for someone to attack, and an alleged paedophile is a socially acceptable target to unleash that violence on.
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I'm way ahead of you in my basement of solitude.
Sounds nice and cozy
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Eyup, I remember this one guy this dude found who was insanely guilty. Was not only in a "relationship" with a child, but was trying to get him to do cocaine.
The pedo-hunter who was onto him decided the best thing to do wasn't to call the cops, but to harass him in a target and make a scene. So much so that the Target staff thought the hunter, not the pedo, was the criminal.
Police were called and they wound up arresting the pedo upon realizing the situation, but due to the harassment, the way the evidence was collected, and all that...
The only thing they could get him on was a traffic violation when the pedo was driving away from the Target.
My advice for people is this - Don't be a pedo-hunter, while it is noble that you wanna fight back against the cruelty of the world.. The truth is you're going to wind up doing more harm than good unless you know EXACTLY what you're doing. If you let your anger control how you do investigations, you're not that much different from the killer cops that butcher the innocent.
Especially since sex crimes are ones where the mere accusation is enough to ruin people's lives. I should know, I was nearly expelled at my Community College because a guidance consular blanket accused me of attacking a woman at her car. It was luck, a phone call to her boss, playing the autism card, and calling the bluff... asking her to prove the attack, provide witnesses, show me the police report, and she basically dropped everything and apologized when she couldn't. And I knew she couldn't, because I do not attack people, Hell, I have the muscle mass of Melvin Junko BEFORE he became the Toxic Avenger, even if I wanted to I'd just get my ass beat.
Later she tried it again over me using a female restroom as a transwoman, thankfully this was after Obama amended Title IX to cover transpeole so I once again had an Uno Reverse card. So I just got a call from her boss telling me to use whatever restroom I wanted and to ignore her.
I don't know what's wrong with that person or why she was so hellbent on getting me kicked out of school, but.. I think of her a lot, not only because she traumatized me with her false accusations, but because thanks to her, I do know that false accusations do indeed happen, and sometimes they come from powerful people.
i forgot to mention some sites publically will list people who have exposed themselves, or pedos, i assume its a law that allows that, and thats how they find it. i happened to stumble a forum for specific cities, and they have a "pedo-map, like google map destinations.
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Correct, you're lived experience means nothing to me, that's for people who know you. As for statistics, you presented none.
And for the rest, you've invented a lot of what you think I said.
Take your victimhood elsewhere, there are people with real problems at the moment, as you can see there are pedo's and worse to deal with, which compared to your issues, is a mountains to molehills situation.
If you're reply is to tell me how hard trans people have it, you can fuck right off, there are much bigger fish to fry.
Look it up. It's not my job to educate you. Facing danger in real life is a real problem, having every conservative politician focusing on banning your healthcare and reducing your rights is a real problem. I have to believe you're an empathy lacking troll or a bigot, and likely both. Discrimination is a "real problem,' and even if pedophilia was the number one political issue in our country, extrajudicial violence isn't going to solve it. And I block bigots, because I'm not going to debate someone who acts in bad faith and says something like
there are people with real problems at the moment
Insane thing to say.
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I always knew there was something wrong with that these people were doing but couldn't exactly put my finger on it and never talked about it because people would've yelled at me and used false dillema arguments like many people who criticized them back them recieved "You support pedophiles you removed"
Hell, KiwiFarms style tactics is becoming more and more common and mainstream. It's on Lemmy too.
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Lots of people in the comments are failing to see the issue with this, so allow me to illustrate. Fair warning, this will not be an easy read.
So let's imagine you really hate trans people, gay people, and liberals. Unfortunately for you, none of these are crimes (yet), so you can't just go around assaulting and killing these people indiscriminately, as much as you'd like to. So what are you going to do?
Well, the best hate campaigns start with a shared enemy, and nobody is more hated than a child predator. Best of all, you can do pretty much whatever you want to them with no recourse. What are they going to do, call the police? Nobody is going to speak out against what you're doing, because if they do, you can just say that if they don't support you, then they must be defending child predators!
Now that we have a precedent for violence, it's time to expand our scope a bit. Since hunting pedophiles is a-ok, now you just need to label anyone you don't like a pedophile. You could say gay and trans people are pedophiles and groomers. And again, if anyone opposes you, just call them a groomer too!
But maybe that's not enough for you. No, you want to make sure that you can target anyone who disagrees with you. Well good news, because you can just join a group of people who believe that anyone who dislikes Donald Trump is a deep state pedophile. You don't even need evidence anymore, and there's a good chance the cops will be on your side! Happy hunting!
Seriously though, this vigilante "justice" should not be celebrated. Yes, we need to take child predators off the streets, but there is a process for that. Denying anyone due process opens the door to denying it to everyone.
Yeah I believe the next step in this process is to make the easy jump into hunting all those people expressing 'Pedo apologia'. Half this thread suddenly is fair game to 'investigate.'
It's a bottomless well, really.
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Those Redditors are probably 16 year olds themselves upset that the girls they like are always going for 18 - 20 year olds
Ding ding ding.
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16-18 year olds
wouldnt those technically be Ephebophiles?
It isn't the medical definition at work, here. It's the legal one.
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It depends on how these channels are going about finding their victims for it to be considered similar.
Remember, entrapment is based around luring someone to do something they otherwise would not have done had the operation to entrap them not occurred. If they created an account posing as a minor, then directly DM'd a person asking if they wanted to do x/y/z with a minor, that would be entrapment.
But if they made an account claiming to be a minor on social media, and the person contacted them voluntarily, asked their age, was told it was under 18 and still continued messaging, then sent explicit photos, that's not entrapment.
However, if they were then the people who initiated the conversation about wanting the person to come to their house / visit them somewhere, that could be considered entrapment, and the only evidence against the person that could be eligible for use in court would be the explicit material they sent without being prompted.
It varies case-by-case, but from what I've seen, most of the larger operations tend to try and avoid entrapment-like tactics in most cases, where they only allow the other person to initiate unlawful behaviors, rather than prompting anything themselves.
These folks include presenting a false person as being of age, then switching to underage at the time of meetup when the target shows up.
A group descends upon the target who is now told they're a pedophile.
Then the group tries to kill the person who was trying to meet what they thought was an adult.
And the perpetrators think this is justice.
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Not only that, but it both reduces the chance of someone going to get help, because they don't want to be hunted down, and reporting, because someone who knows of them might not want to see them be lynched, and won't report them for that reason.
Absolutely!
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These folks include presenting a false person as being of age, then switching to underage at the time of meetup when the target shows up.
A group descends upon the target who is now told they're a pedophile.
Then the group tries to kill the person who was trying to meet what they thought was an adult.
And the perpetrators think this is justice.
These folks include presenting a false person as being of age, then switching to underage at the time of meetup when the target shows up.
I've never seen even a single instance in my own viewership of numerous channels that engage in pedophile hunting where the person is presented as being above the legal age of consent, then only switching to underage at the time of the meeting. They're presented as underage from the get-go.
Then the group tries to kill the person
Again, this doesn't seem to be a widespread thing compared to the number of them that simply lure them to a location then ask them questions (and directly state that they are free to leave at any time since they're not law enforcement and can't arrest them) The people you're talking about are a small minority of both the actual number of pedo hunters, and the number of overall views received.
And the perpetrators think this is justice.
I doubt the people that are explicitly lying to farm content think it's justice. I do believe the people actually catching people who voluntarily contacted someone presented as underage from the start do.
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Look it up. It's not my job to educate you. Facing danger in real life is a real problem, having every conservative politician focusing on banning your healthcare and reducing your rights is a real problem. I have to believe you're an empathy lacking troll or a bigot, and likely both. Discrimination is a "real problem,' and even if pedophilia was the number one political issue in our country, extrajudicial violence isn't going to solve it. And I block bigots, because I'm not going to debate someone who acts in bad faith and says something like
there are people with real problems at the moment
Insane thing to say.
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He definitely has some skeletons in his closet, he's got to have done something
See this is that shit.
This is that shit.
Stop doing this.
There are plenty of things wrong with Elon Musk that are well documented in the public record by diverse and reputable sources that can easily be cited.
Do that, not this.
